BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Roy Schultheis, partner at Potomac Partners DC and former COS for Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.)

How/where are you celebrating your birthday and with whom? “I will be celebrating my birthday with my beautiful wife on our honeymoon in Buenos Aires, Argentina.”

How did you get your start in politics? “My background is in business and finance and a business partner of mine was politically involved. He won a seat in Congress in 2014 and asked me to build and run his congressional office.”

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What’s an interesting book/article you’re reading now or finished? And why? “To educate myself on the economy I like to read the quarterly and annual conference call transcripts of publicly traded corporations. In my view, there’s no better way to get important details about what is happening in the economy, and what the trends are, than hearing from CEOs reporting their earnings.”

What is a trend going on in the U.S. or abroad that doesn’t get enough attention? “National and global sovereign debt. Eight years ago, members of Congress might as well have had it tattooed on their foreheads that the United States has a debt problem and now, after each party has passed their own versions of trillion-dollar stimulus packages, it’s no longer mainstream, even though the problem is far worse today.”

How is the Trump presidency going? “The best description is probably chaotic; however, I think the chaos is mostly by design. President Trump is applying intense pressure on the system and it’s getting uglier before it gets better. Congress was a failing institution long before President Trump, and while the pressure he is applying is testing them, our institutions will survive, and I believe they will work better for the people going forward.”

What’s a fun fact that people in Washington might not know about you? “My father fled communism in Eastern Europe and my mother did the same when she and her family were forced to leave Cuba. Two totally different parts of the world, but the results from communism are always the same. However, without the need for my parents to seek freedom they would have never met in Miami, and I wouldn't be around to answer these questions!”